E.L. Konigsburg, 1930–2013 – Beloved middle grade author, E.L. Konisburg passed away on Friday, April 19. Konsiburg is most famous for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and The View from Saturday. PW has a nice obituary. Publishers Weekly

How to Make Money on Your Lunch Break – Today is a very slow news day. Mondays usually are. So in lieu of real news, I present to you Gizmodo’s 5 ways to try to make money over your lunch time. I read or blog over lunchtime, but this is another way to pass the time. Suggestions include freelancing, using Fiverr or Mechanical Turk, or even signing up for sweepstakes.Gizmodo

How it works Each year, 30 books are chosen by an independent panel of librarians and booksellers. The authors of the books waive their royalties and the publishers agree to pay the costs of producing the specially-printed World Book Night U.S. editions. Bookstores and libraries sign up to be community host locations for the volunteer book givers. After the book titles are announced, members of the public apply to personally hand out 20 copies of a particular title in their community. World Book Night U.S. vets the applications, and the givers are chosen based on their ability to reach light and non-readers. The selected givers choose a local participating bookstore or library from which to pick up the 20 copies of their book, and World Book Night U.S. delivers the books to these host locations. Givers pick up their books in the week before World Book Night. On April 23rd, they give their books to those who don’t regularly read and/or people who don’t normally have access to printed books, for reasons of means or access.

Avoid Noble Romance – Author Brita Adams details some ongoing struggles with her publisher, Noble Romance. Noble was left adrift when Jill Noble left. Jean Marc Philippe Gombart was hired as the new CEO to “fix” things. Unfortunately his management style has left authors uncomfortable. Addams has had to fight for complete distribution of her book. Brita Addams Blog

On February 7, when Serenity’s Dream still hadn’t been put up on All Romance Ebooks, I wrote to Mr. Gombart.

I wondered when you will be getting Serenity up on All Romance ebooks. I see it isn’t there and a good share of my sales have come from there, behind Amazon of course. My tour officially starts on Sunday and I’d like to have the link should people wish to shop there. Hope all is well, Thank you in advance, Brita

On February 7, I received this reply:

I basically do not work with them, them represent 0.9% of our overall sales. I may do it for you in the next future but I have other emergencies. I hope you understand the logic behind that. Jean Marc Philippe Gombart CEO Noble Romance Publishing

There was a great deal of back and forth, me explaining my side and him his. Ultimately, later that day, I received this:

This is pointless to do promotion that cost us more than the revenue it may generate. I will upload later you book on ARe because you ask for it but you must understand that based on performance, they are not my priority. Best Regards,

Jean Marc Philippe Gombart CEO Noble Romance Publishing

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

Thanks for sharing the news about E.L. Konigsburg. In the wake of all the happened last week I completely missed news of her passing. As an elementary school student I had a particular fondness for her novels, especially “From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”. Last year I introduced her work to my 10 year old son. It was an instant hit with him too.

I’ve always thought of myself as ‘just a reader’ (despite all the writing I used to do in my corporate gig) and I really want to thank you, Jane, for writing about the publishing side of the equation from a reader’s perspective. I have learned so much; things I never would have even thought of, let alone now know they are regular occurrences. The whole Noble thing is just one example of the type of activity you have opened my mind to – so in all sincerity, thanks. It does help me make buying decisions, both on authors and purchase locations.

For the love of all that is holy, yes, AVOID NOBLE ROMANCE. You can read about my experience with Noble releasing a second edition paperback of my Spoils of War that is a grossly inferior and substandard product here. Well, that has details I was willing to give the public, anyway. Noble released the second edition paperback in October 2012 without notifying me so I was totally unaware it existed or that there were problems until April 2013. Dimensions that are approx. 11″x9″, no title page, no page headers, no page numbers, no chapter breaks…and readers had been buying that atrocity for six months. Good God.

I’m filing a claim against Noble in Georgia magistrate court, not only due to the second edition frankenpod but also issues I haven’t mentioned or discussed in public. Unless writers would like to follow my footsteps into court…no. Just no. Stay away.

Thank you for letting us know about E.L. Konigsburg’s death. Her first book Jennifer, Hecate, et al. was a favorite of mine. I felt that it deserved a Newbury more than From the Mixed-Up Filed of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (which I liked too, just not as much). I particularly appreciated that she put herself out there by illustrating her earlier books in addition to writing them even though she hadn’t trained as an artist.

Thanks for the blurb about World Book Night. This will be my second year in distributing books to military families on Pearl Harbor – I have James Patterson’s MIDDLE SCHOOL: THE WORST YEARS OF MY LIFE.

You may add my voice to the list. I am prominently listed on Piers Anthony’s HiPiers.com as one of the complainants against Noble Romance Publishing, and have just published a post at my blog (http://jswayne.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/silence-does-not-equal-consent/) concerning the substance of my issues. What triggered this was learning that Gombart is now claiming I am on friendly terms with Noble, all is forgiven, et cetera. I assure you this is not the case.

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